NAACP, SPLC file amicus briefs to fight for repeal of law that bans raising minimum wage

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Partnership for Working Families, history professors as well as the mayors of Atlanta and Gary, Indiana have all filed amicus briefs to support the lawsuit that seeks to repeal the state law that forbids municipalities in Alabama from setting their own minimum wage.

The Alabama National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Greater Birmingham Ministries sued the state in 2016, claiming that HB 174 is tainted "with racial animus" and that is violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, as well as violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by transferring control over minimum wages from Birmingham's officials - who were voted in by Birmingham's majority black electorate - to state officials, who were elected by a majority white electorate.

"In particular, plaintiffs' allegations to the effect that Act 2016-18 has a disparate negative impact on Black workers in Birmingham are supported by overwhelming evidence that Act 2016-18 preserves a racial wage gap that dates back to the Jim Crow era and in which Black workers earn the lowest wages among low-wage workers," attorneys for the SPLC and the NPWF write in their brief. "This racial wage gap among low-wage workers is so stark, consistent and long-standing in Alabama and across the South as to render Act 2016-18's disparate impact reasonably foreseeable by the Alabama legislature and therefore probative of the legislature's intent in enacting Act 2016-18."

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs couldn't link the state's motivations with race as the suit claimed it did. The groups appealed the ruling within a week.

The Birmingham City Council voted in 2015 to raise the city's minimum wage to $10.10 per hour through incremental raises. The Republican super majorities in the legislature's House and Senate put a bill to void the increase on the fast track, prompting the council to expedite Birmingham's raise, but the law ultimately voided the ordinance.

"Since the end of Reconstruction, Alabama has repeatedly reshaped government powers to deny decision-making authority to local black majorities and to keep its black citizens economically subordinated," former Professor of History at Auburn University Wayne Flynt and Susan Ashmore, Professor of History at Emory University, wrote in their amicus brief. "In light of this history, the district court erred in assuming that Alabama's current restrictions on municipal lawmaking reflect a race-neutral practice."